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Everyday Life Has Become a Health Risk

March 31, 2009

Rock musicians have exciting lives, but there is a dark side to that excitement: instability, both professionally and personally. Part of that instability has always been in matters of health; musicians don’t have steady jobs, so they tend to have no health insurance. The singer-songwriter Peter Case, a veteran of punk and power-pop (with the Nerves and the Plimsouls) and folk-rock (in his long solo career), recently underwent emergency open-heart surgery, and now other musicians are helping to raise money for his medical bills with a fund and upcoming benefit concert.

In related news, the rock journalist Paul Williams, who founded Crawdaddy magazine and has written a multi-volume study of Bob Dylan’s career as a performer, has also seen hard times in recent years—in Williams’s case, he began to show early signs of dementia following a 1995 bicycle accident and, as his condition has worsened, the cost of his care has mounted dramatically. Plans are currently underway for a benefit anthology and the republication of Williams’s books, but, in the meantime, there is a Web site set up to help his family (his wife is the singer-songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill) deal with his care.